Author: Guest Blogger

A decade ago, the Pew Research Center conducted research called “The 2010 Religious Knowledge Survey.”  The results showed a lack of religious literacy among Americans.  For instance, more than half of Christians didn’t know that Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament.  Few Americans knew that Vishnu and Shiva are figures in Hinduism.  Most didn’t know that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist spiritual leader.  

 In July of 2019, the Center released more research on this topic called “What Americans Know about Religion.”  It reports,

“Most Americans are familiar with some of the basics of Christianity and the Bible, and even a few facts about Islam. But far fewer U.S. adults are able to correctly answer factual questions about Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, and most do not know what the U.S. Constitution says about religion as it relates to elected officials. In addition, large majorities of Americans are unsure (or incorrect) about the share of the U.S. public that is Muslim or Jewish….”

“What Americans Know About Religion,” Pew Research Center

At ACC there is a growing interest in religious literacy.  Grant Potts, Department Chair of Philosophy, Religion and Humanities was tapped by the American Academy of Religion to help develop religious literacy guidelines which were released in fall 2019.  Here is link to those guidelines.  https://www.aarweb.org/aar-religious-literacy-guidelines 

 Last Summer Professor Farrah Keeler of ESOL attended Harvard University’s summer Institute on Religious Literacy.  This week long Institute, started in 2015, focuses on how religions are internally diverse, evolve and change, and are embedded in all aspects of human experience.  Farrah is incorporating religious literacy into the curriculum for her exit level ESOL Reading course.  She is allowing me to attend some of her classes.  We are reading and discussing the novel The Chosen by Chaim Potok about two young Jewish boys in New York City in the last years of World War II.  We are also reading and discussing case studies supplied by the Institute which focus on Judaism and contemporary social and political issues.  

The Institute is accepting applications for this summer by the deadline of March 16, 2020.  The link to its homepage is   https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/for-educators/summer-institute

Last May Dean Matthew Daude Laurents and Grant Potts convened a group of like-minded teachers for a Religious Literacy Committee.  This project has become one of the agenda items of the Liberal Arts Academic Master Plan.  For the short term, the committee is trying to do the following:

• facilitate faculty attendance at the Institute
• recruit more members for the committee
• establish relationships with Student Life Religious organizations
• lay the groundwork for an ACC Center of Religious Literacy.

Since knowledge of religion can be useful in so many areas like History, Government, Sociology, Interdisciplinary Studies, Criminal Justice, Nursing, Travel and Tourism, and others, the committee is reaching out to teachers to join the committee.   If you are interested, please get in touch with Professor Grant Potts at gpotts@austincc.edu.

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post by guest blogger Frank Cronin

a guest post by Frank Cronin

The Liberal Arts Academic Master Plan and Non-Digital Literacy

As we prepare our Liberal Arts Academic Master Plan proposal, we must consider what we should set as our goals. In this new world where we are constantly on the frontier of some new technological form of communication, we should be concerned about improving our students’ digital literacies. On the other hand, we should also be concerned about non-digital literacies, the Hard Skills of effective listening and speaking. Fortunately, ACC has many courses in the Communication Studies department that can help, not only students, but faculty be better listeners and speakers.

There are three negative trends in society’s listening and speaking skills that we could address.

1. Published in 1998 Deborah Tannen’s The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words, describes an American culture in which rational discussion of ideas in order to share and consider has been replaced by a culture which as Tannen states “…makes us approach public dialogue, and just about anything else we need to accomplish, as if it were a fight.”  We have seen this continue to develop especially in the political arena. Many of my students last semester in and Integrated Reading and Writing co-req with Government and other INRW courses, say they avoid political discussion for this reason. When people talk politics, they argue.
2. Another one is the vulgar fabric of our social discourse. In the arts, on news shows, and in the hallways of ACC coarse language, rarely specific or informative, is becoming much more common.
3. The last concern about modern communication is the shift to more written communication especially in texts and on Twitter.  Many of my students admit to overuse of their phone particularly for texting. And faculty know it is not unusual to walk into a classroom and see students texting while completely ignoring other students sitting next to them. At the same time, Texas public schools and ACC are now requiring fewer students to take Communication courses.

In 2013 the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 5, no longer requiring a Speech course for graduation. Since then, high school students have been coming to ACC with less preparation in verbal communication skills. In 2015 ACC implemented the Effective Learning course. To make room in some degree programs for the Effective Learning course, the Communication course requirement was removed. Whereas all degree programs used to require a communications course, now only 10 of 19 Associate of science programs, 19 of 35 Associate of Arts programs and 38 of 100 Associate of Applied Arts programs require a communications course. Consequently, just as the need for more training in communications seems much more important, less is available to our students.

In the Liberal Arts ideas are paramount. Just as important are the skills of listening to and speaking the ideas.  So, as Liberal Arts moves forward with its own Academic Master Plan, how does the discipline teach its students and faculty the basics on non-digital communication? We have various resources for doing this. 

Communication Studies teachers belong to one or more professional organizations. One is The National Communication Association (NCA) founded in 1914, and it provides guidelines for ethical and effective communication. In one of its publications, “What Should a Graduate with a Communication Degree Know, Understand, and Be Able to Do?” one section focuses
solely on the ethical aspects of communication and just some are

• Articulate the ethical dimensions of a communication situation 
• Choose to communicate with ethical intention 
• Propose solutions for (un)ethical communication

These guidelines can direct not just the Communications faculty, but other faculty and students. Another resource is incorporating speaking and listening skills in non-Communications course. In 2104 Professor Mark Butland and I started teaching a co-req of a Developmental Writing and the Public Speaking course. Because of our collaboration I have imbedded speaking and listening skills in to all my classes including INRW and EDUC courses by doing group work and presentations.

I see as a challenge how we can use the next resource, Communication Studies courses themselves. With Guided Pathways students are less likely to take one of those courses if not in their degree plan. And how do encourage teachers to take those courses? I have been trying to find out since last summer when I took SPCH 1311, Introduction to Communications, with Professor Joansandy Wong, what kind of professional development credit I can get for taking
that course. Some sort of professional development credit would encourage faculty to take a Communications course.

INRW is setting up a Communication Café at the HLC Accelerator for fall 2020. Though the focus will be on writing, that is a form of communication and often precedes spoken communication as in writing a public speech or preparing written notes for a meeting. The Communications Café could possibly be aligned with the following resource.

Professor Theresa Glenn, Department Chair of Communication Studies and her colleagues have been discussing a Communications Lab. It could be a resource for students and faculty. The lab could help with the following:

• How to reduce communication apprehension
• How to improve interviewing skills and resume writing
• How to enhance presentation skills
• How to facilitate small group work

Liberal Arts has a chance with developing its Academic Master Plan to emphasize the importance of non-digital communication. We know from research that the business world values these Hard Skills of listening and speaking. We know from history and reading the daily newspaper that our political discourse can be improved if more citizens know how to listen to each other more empathetically and discuss our important issues rather than getting bogged down in arguments in which each side is only interested in defending its own views.

Guest blogger Jenifer Hamilton Hernandez

Over the course of a semester teaching English 1301, I try to help students find their voices, to become confident in both their own abilities and in the writing process. I want them to develop dexterity and resilience as writers, so that after leaving my class, they feel comfortable entering a world that will ask them to write anything from a cover letter for a job application to a research paper for an anthropology class. 

From one essay assignment to the next, my comments on their papers evolve from “You have done a great job with organization and supporting details; however, lack of proofreading is holding you back” to “This was a pleasure to read.” 

In some instances, I see raw talent from the first essay to the last, and in those cases, I point that out as well: “You appear to have innate writing talent. That is a gift and it can be powerful too. I hope you will continue writing and practicing different types of writing (if that interests you, of course) with whatever kind of guidance works best for you. There are so many ways to go about it: podcasts, for credit college classes (like creative writing or journalism), joining a writing group, or keeping a journal, to name a few. If writing is something you enjoy, then make time for it and keep writing–you never know where you’ll end up as a result.”

After receiving that particular comment on an essay assignment, one student from a Summer 2019 class asked for more guidance. I recommended specific creative writing and journalism classes at ACC, sent him a list of some of my tried and true books on writing, a link to a website with weekly writing prompts, and a list of area organizations providing community and instruction for writers. I encouraged him to meet with fellow writers regularly, to submit his work for publication, and to not take rejection as a “sign” that he shouldn’t be writing–because editorial preferences are always subjective.

Three months later, he emailed to say his work had been published for the first time, a poem in an online literary ‘zine. He said he jumped for joy when he got a note from the editor saying his work had been chosen, that it was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Also that he’s now enrolled in a creative writing class, and that he’ll continue sending his work out to publications.

He also said this: “I received so many rejection letters before this. If there’s one thing to pass along to your other students, it’s that you have to keep going. It can take a long time to find a place for your voice.”

I am so glad that Sean’s first published poem has found its place. You can read that poem, “Refugee/fugitive” here.